Cole Lindsay was nearly 20 nautical miles in the air Thursday morning above Oregon’s Silver Falls State Park as the massive Beachie Creek Fire burned. Maneuvering a contraption that looked like a tricked-out Microsoft Xbox controller, Lindsay zoomed a camera in on spots along the west edge of the fire ledge. The fire had shape-shifted and smoldered since Wednesday, burning less intensely in some areas.
“You can see those little spots poke out and catch your eye,” said Lindsay, a multi-mission aircraft operator with the Oregon Department of Forestry. “I can zoom right in on it, get coordinates and a map of where it’s at.”
But looking out the window of the small aircraft, dense smoke hovering from the fires burning more than 900,000 acres of land below obscured everything in sight. The only way Lindsay could see through the creamy soot was with the assistance of a thermal image surveillance camera hanging from the plane’s underbelly.